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Conceptual Modeling of Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are dynamic computer-based three-dimensional visual environments in which the user can participate. The user can manipulate the objects in the virtual world (e.g., pick up, turn, ...) which creates the feeling that the objects are physically present in the space. Therefore the goal of a virtual world is to come as close as possible to the reality it simulates.

Virtual worlds are relatively new and most research in this domain is situated in the context of hardware, visualization techniques and algorithms, programming languages for interactive 3D applications and in applications for building 3D environments. In a majority of the cases the design of a virtual world happens in an ad hoc way and is very close to the implementation level. It stays a job for specialists.

This research consists of the introduction of a conceptual level for modeling virtual worlds. The main goal of this research in to introduce a conceptual modeling language for virtual reality (VR). Conceptual modeling is the activity of building a model of an application domain in terms that are familiar to actors in the domain and not in terms of a technical implementation. The introduction of a conceptual level for modeling virtual worlds must open up the use of VR and must also allow to handle the complexity of developing a virtual world.

The main purpose of this project is to introduce conceptual modeling concepts to specify complex 3D objects in Virtual World and to rigorously define the semantics of these new modeling concepts using logic.